Bad News, No One Wants To Buy The Silence Of The Lambs House

You’d think with the real estate market as it is, every home in the nation would be getting snapped up right quick. It turns out that’s not the case as one house in Fayette County, Pennsylvania just can’t seem to get any takers. While there are a number of reasons that a house might not sell, this one has a fairly interesting one to add to this list. Serial killer Buffalo Bill murdered a bunch of people there. Or at least he did in the movie The Silence of the Lambs.

The house that was used as Buffalo Bill’s lair has been on the market since last summer but has yet to see any interest. Scott and Barbara Lloyd, who have owned the house since 1976, have even gone so far as to drop the asking price from $300,000 down to $250,000 last month, but thus far it hasn’t had any effect. That hasn’t stopped the phone from ringing, but it’s been mostly journalists interested in talking about the house history, not interested parties.

While it might not be too surprising that nobody would want to live in a creepy house where terrible things happened, even if they were only on film, the house issues appear to have little to do with its connection to the Best Picture of 1992. First of all, the house is in the middle of nowhere. According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, the area the house is located in is called Layton, and is so small, it’s actually referred to as a village. Add to that the fact that the house only has one bathroom, even though it has four bedrooms, and the house becomes less desirable as a functional place to live. Even if you want to live in a place that’s part of movie history, do you really want to live there?

In the film, starring Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, the house belonged to the serial killer known as Buffalo Bill. The climax of the movie takes place in the home when Foster’s character, Clarice Starling, locates the home and goes in to rescue the victim he still has alive inside. No word if there is a functional "torture well" in the basement today. That’s got to be worth a few thousand dollars right there, right? Actually, if there is, the police might want to keep an eye on whoever does end up buying this house.

How much would it be worth to you to live in a house that made its mark on the history of cinema? Does the dark association make the house more, or less, desirable?